Tucson, AZ

Artist's Statement

Born: 1962 in Baltimore, MarylandLives in Tucson, Arizona

In 1986, Lawrence Gipe graduated with an MFA from Otis Art Institute and had his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, CA. Gipe has mounted 45 solo exhibitions in US galleries and museums in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Munich, Berlin and the Künstverein Düsseldorf. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.

His last solo exhibition in New York was in 2007 at Alexander Grey Associates. Entitled One Picture and the Next Three, it consisted of four archival photographic images re-presented as oil paintings, continuing a strategy of severing historical images from their original, politically charged contexts. The themes have continued to play out in recent solo exhibitions in Munich, San Francisco, Los Angeles and at the Tucson Museum of Art, where Gipe exhibited 25 paintings and an photo-montage installation in 2011.

A mid-career survey, “3 Five-Year Plans: Lawrence Gipe, 1990-2005”, was organized in 2006 by Marilyn Zeitlin at the University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona. In 2001, Gipe executed a mural commission for the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. He has received two NEA Individual Fellowship Grants (1989 and 1996).

Articles and reviews about his work have appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Art and Antiques, L.A. Weekly, Architectural Digest, Elle, The Los Angeles Times, Talk, ArtForum, ArtNews, Art in America, Flash Art, Village Voice, Time Out New York, Kunstforum (Germany); BijutsuTecho (Japan); Applaus (Germany) and others.

As an art critic and writer, Gipe has contributed reviews and feature articles to Flash Art, ArtScribe (England) and the Santa Barbara Independent; from 1988-89, he was a regular art columnist for the L.A. Weekly. Recently, Gipe became a correspondent-at-large for the West Coast-based Artillery Magazine. He also runs a blog called “The Journal of Nostalgia: Visual Culture, History and Science”, which seeks to de-construct the theme of nostalgia and memory.

Gipe’s work has been collected by individuals, foundations and institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, Florida and the Brooklyn Museum, New York.